The Trouble with Rainbows

Joe returns home after the death of his wife and is still loyal to her. So when he reunites with an old classmate, the last thing on his mind is love. Angelica is shy and socially inept, but she promises herself that she will try and socialize. So when she runs into Joe, the Golden Boy of high school, the last thing she expects is romance. Can they discover the will to begin again and let love in? More

Joe Vanetti was deeply in love with his late wife, Roberta, and even thinking of another woman feels disloyal. Although he feels his emotional life has ended with his wife’s, he still has their children to raise. He has returned to Rainbow Rock to bring them near his family. He is not looking for romance and surely does not expect to find it with the high school Ice Queen he remembers as being so aloof and “stuck-up,” so far above him.

Angelica DeForest feels her life has never begun. Painfully shy and socially inept, she has spent her adult years tending aging, bitter relatives. She promises herself she will try to be bolder, to reach out to others and maybe even (gasp!) socialize. She certainly does not intend to begin experimenting with Joe Vanetti, the high school Golden Boy she remembers as being so perfect, so far above her.

Do Joe and Angelica have more in common than a mutual attraction and the misery of loneliness? To build a future together, they will have to discover healing, recovery, and the will to begin again.

Susan Aylworth is a professor emeritus of English at California State University, Chico, where she taught writing for 30 years, a wife of 42 years, a mother of seven children, gramma to twenty-one, and the author of eight novels. Her books have been published by three publishing houses and in five languages. Her poems have appeared in the Broad River Review and Sand Canyon Review. One favorite work is “Gertrude,” a one-woman play that allows Hamlet’s mother to defend herself. “Gertrude” has been produced by two California theaters.

Susan loves poems, plays, words in almost all form, and good raspberry jam.

Born and raised in Arizona, she now lives in northern California with her writer-husband, Roger, a dog called Pirate, and two quirky cats. Like most women of her generation, she wishes the grandkids would visit more often.